Grim-faced, a recently captured bomber reacted in a totally unexpected manner when he met a convicted fellow conspirator for the first time in over a year.
Muklis Yunos, 31, wept as he and Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, a self-confessed 'liaison officer' of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), clasped each other's handcuffed hands inside a heavily secured room at the Department of Justice in Manila.
Al-Ghozi, 32, arrested last year, is now serving a 12-year sentence for illegal possession of 1.2 tonnes of explosives and two false passports. Yunos, a self-confessed demolitions expert of the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), had been on the run since December 31, 2001 when bombs exploded in Manila on board a train, a bus outside the international airport, a hotel and the United States Embassy, killing 19 people. Al-Ghozi readily confessed to sourcing the funds for the atrocities and said his accomplice was 'a member of the MILF' named Yunos.
For months, authorities were undecided whether to believe Al-Ghozi's disclosures on Yunos. Eid Kabalu, spokesman for the MILF, which has waged a secessionist war for the past 25 years in an attempt to form an Islamic state, repeatedly denied they resorted to terrorism or that Yunos was a member.
'The only Yunos I know is dead now due to heart failure,' he had told the Sunday Morning Post.
Last month, authorities intensified their search for the elusive Yunos, after he was spotted in Davao City in the south days before bombs exploded outside its international airport and wharf.